Urban Myth Busting: Congestion, Idling, and Carbon Emissions
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Increasing road capacity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will backfire.
Recent Streetsblog TEXAS posts about VMT
What Explains the Decline in Driving Among Young People?
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New research from UCLA concludes that while attitudes toward driving may be shifting, economic factors explain most of the recent decline in driving among younger Americans.
Is Something Wrong With TXDOT’s Data on Driving?
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Recently, we explored how Texans seem to be driving less than they did 10 years ago. According to Texas DOT’s data, the average Texan is driving less every day, and Dallas, Tarrant, and Harris counties saw a decline in total driving mileage, even though they added millions of people. If this data is accurate, it suggests […]
Texas DOT’s Own Numbers Cast Doubt on Its Story of Ever-Rising Traffic
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Back in 2015, the people of Texas were asked by the legislature and Governor Greg Abbott to meet the challenge of the state’s projected traffic growth by enacting a constitutional amendment to require road spending for the next decade. The people agreed and voted to allocate about $38 billion in state taxes for the Texas Department of Transportation (TXDOT) […]
4 Ways Road Builders Game the Numbers to Justify Highways
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The people who make the case for highways often present themselves as unbiased technicians, simply providing evidence to an audience subject to irrational bias.
Forecasts said motorists would make 21,000 trips per day on Greenville’s Southern Connector, a public-private toll road. In real life they made fewer than 9,000. Map via Toll Road News
But traffic forecasting is not a neutral, dispassionate exercise. It [...]
Without Transit, American Cities Would Take Up 37 Percent More Space
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Even if you never set foot on a bus or a train, chances are transit is saving you time and money. The most obvious reason is that transit keeps cars off the road, but the full explanation is both less intuitive and more profound: Transit shrinks distances between destinations, putting everything within closer reach.
A new study published by the Transportation Research Board quantifies the [...]